More Articles

Married men who cheat on their wives risk more than their marriages.According to Italian
researchers, their lives might also be at stake.

Unfaithful men are more likely to suffer deadly heart attacks, according to a recent study
published in the
Journal of Sexual Medicine.

A team of University of Florence researchers say the claim is based on more than karma. The team
compiled and analyzed years of medical literature related to cheating and discovered the
correlation.

Marc Gillinov, a heart surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic, said he isn’t surprised by the
results.Gillinov co-wrote the book
Heart 411, which looks at the link between stress and heart health. He said a guilty
conscience and stress from keeping secrets are a deadly combination that can result in increased
heart rate, blood pressure and anxiety. “Stereotypes, whether in medicine or in life in general,
tend to have at least a kernel of truth to them,” Gillinov said. “It’s almost like there’s a
medical reason for fidelity.”

Meeting with a mistress also is physically demanding, the researchers suggest. Cheating men
frequently have affairs with younger women and might eat, drink or smoke more to accommodate
them.

Because of scanty data, however, the answers aren’t concrete, said Mario Maggi and Alessandra
Fisher, two of the researchers. It’s difficult, they said, to find reliable statistics about
cheating because its definitions vary across cultures and it’s often stigmatized.

Even so, the review’s findings still caught Maggi and Fisher off guard. “Unfaithful men
generally have better hormonal milieu and vascular function than faithful men, so we were surprised
having an extramarital affair represents an independent risk factor for cardiovascular events,”
Fisher said in an email. Doctors also have reported that men live longer if they consistently have
sex into old age, but these findings suggest that’s only the case if they’re with the same woman in
a familiar place.

“People have this idea that sexual activity is some Olympic-type exertion, but it’s generally
not super strenuous for most people,” Gillinov said. “But sex out of a relationship, cheating, can
have its consequences.”

But that doesn’t mean that cheaters should fear suffering a heart attack during sex, a demise
called “sudden coital death,” said Martha Gulati, a cardiologist at Ohio State University. She said
although it’s often portrayed in movies or on television, such events are rare in real life.Still,
Gulati said, men should know the risks based on their own health and talk with a physician about
concerns.

“To make sure your heart is healthy, it’s always about prevention,” Gulati said. “Know your risk
factors for heart disease, and you have a higher likelihood of being healthy, no matter who you’re
having sex with.”